When George Crandall decides to change careers following a messy divorce, he chooses history and gets the idea of going back in time to observe the effects of the Black Death at first hand. The technical difficulties that defeated other historians he overcomes because of his engineering background and he soon finds himself back in the year 1340 - but instead of a comfortable sinecure at court, he is appointed to the lordship of Capelburgh, an insignificant castle on the Northumbrian coast. After turning down the offer of a nubile 13-year old and her unattractive but desperate mother, George falls first for Meg, a bewitching Scottish red-head and then, when she proves fickle and faithless, he suddenly realises that the girl who has been under his nose all along is the one for him - or perhaps I should say, she manipulates him into matrimony and he doesn't mind a bit. Along the way he drives out a band of robbers, blackmails a priest, gets rid of an unwelcome squire, teaches a village to read and generally turns the Fourteenth Century on its head in his own little world of Capelburgh.